A home with a view

There's a sense in which I never get attached to walls. Not unless they're pretty damn special, that is, as in, made of something other than concrete and cardboard, and actually pretty, not covered in white, flaky stuff that's designed to show off spiders and stains.



This means I don't care that much where I live. One house is pretty much as good as any other. But it doesn't mean I like to move. Or that I don't get attached to my home. It really doesn't, believe me (or ask my husband).

When, two years ago, the threat of redundancy was hanging over every one's heads, my daughter made the following remark. It doesn't matter, she said, if we lose our home (university accommodation, so goes with the job). We have so many books we could build a house with them. She has a point. Our flat is covered in books. It's a good sized flat, with biggish bedrooms, a huge living room, and a medium sized, airy, light kitchen. But every inch of the walls that we could afford to buy shelves for is covered in books. The rest is covered with carpets. So we don't actually see much of our walls at all.

Our home, although it isn't identical with the walls that mark its physical location, is pretty much occupying the same space. In order to move, we'd have to peal our home from the walls, from the floors, and put it back together somewhere else. Not a very attractive prospect.

Add to this that we've actually got a view. A pretty decent one if you overlook the factories in the foreground. We get to see the Anatolian hills, layers and layers of them, huge, round, ancient, impressive. In the winter they're covered in snow. When the pollution gets too much, some of them disappear, we lose them. But we know they're there. They remind us that we live, not just on campus, in a slightly artificial environment where every body is either a professor or a student, and where most of our friends are ex-pats. They remind us that we are in Anatolia, that big, beautiful land, so fertile historically and so forbidding. That's one bit of home I can't move to another house. And when we do move, for a place that's bigger, and better suited to our needs, I'll miss it.

(c) Sucaattin KIRIMHAN

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